The Iron Trevet; or, Jocelyn the Champion: A Tale of the Jacquerie. Эжен Сю

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СКАЧАТЬ proceeded the scribe, "raise your head towards our seigneur and repeat my words: 'Seigneur, I humbly repent having had the audacity of using unseemly words towards you.'"

      The serf hesitated a moment, and then, overcoming his aversion with a violent effort, he repeated in a hollow voice: "Seigneur, I humbly repent having had the audacity of … using … unseemly words … towards you."

      "Further," pursued the notary, "I repent no less humbly, my seigneur, of having wickedly wished to oppose your exercise of your right of the first fruits upon one of your female vassals, whom I took for my wife."

      Mazurec's resignation had reached the end of its tether. The notary's last words, recalled to the unhappy man's mind the infamous violence that the sweet maid whom he tenderly loved had been made a victim of; he uttered a heart-rending cry, hid his face in his hands and, convulsed with sobs, fell forward with his face on the ground. At that spectacle, Jocelyn, whose indignation threatened to overpower his prudence, was about to leap forward, when he again heard the cry of William Caillet. Stooping down to Mazurec as if to help him rise, he said two words in his ears so as to be heard by none others, and continued aloud: "Ho! Pshaw!.. What ails you?.. Why do you weep, my boy?.. You are told that our good seigneur will pardon your fault when you shall have repeated the words that you are ordered to… Go ahead… Fling them out quickly, those words!"

      With his face bathed in tears and a smile of the damned, Mazurec repeated these words after the notary had told them over again: "I repent no less humbly, my seigneur, having wickedly wished to oppose your exercise of your right of the first fruits upon one of your female vassals, whom I took for my wife."

      "In repentance of which, my seigneur," pursued the notary, "I humbly place myself at your mercy."

      "In repentance of which, my seigneur," stammered Mazurec in a fainting voice, "I humbly place myself at your mercy."

      "Be it so," responded the Sire of Nointel with a haughty and flippant air. "I grant you mercy. But you shall not be set free until after having rendered satisfaction in a judicial duel, to which you are summoned by my guest Gerard of Chaumontel, a nobleman, whom you have outrageously defamed by accusing him of larceny." Turning thereupon to one of his equerries: "Let the peasant be guarded until the hour of the tourney, and let the daughter be delivered to her father;" and stepping away with his friends towards the door of the church, the young seigneur said to them, laughing: "The lesson will do Jacques Bonhomme good. Do you know, gentlemen, that that stupid pack has of late been pricking up its ears and commenced to bridle up against our rights? Although she was a comely lassie, I cared little for that peasant's wife; but it was necessary to prove to the vile rustic plebs that we own it body and soul; therefore, gentlemen, let us never forget the proverb: 'Smite a villein and he'll bless you; bless a villein and he'll smite you.'3 Now, let us hear the sacred mass; you will tell me whether Gloriande de Chivry, my betrothed, whom you will see in my seigniorial pew, is not a superb beauty."

      "Happy Conrad!" said Gerard of Chaumontel, the robber knight, "for bride, a handsome and radiant beauty, who, besides, is the richest heiress of this region, seeing that after the death of the Count of Chivry, his seigniory, in default of male heirs, will fall from the lance to the distaff! Oh, Conrad! What beautiful days of gold and silk will you not spin, thanks to the opulent distaff of Gloriande of Chivry!"

      At the moment when thus chatting the noblemen entered the church, Mazurec, who was still kept a prisoner, vanished under the vault, and a man of the suite of the Sire of Nointel led out Aveline. She was not quite eighteen. Despite the pallor of her face and her deeply disturbed features, the girl preserved her surpassing beauty. She moved with faltering steps, still clad in her humble bride's apparel, of coarse white cloth. Her loose hair fell upon and half covered her shoulders. Her lacerated arms still bore the traces of tight hands, seeing that, in order to triumph over the desperate resistance of his victim, the Sire of Nointel had her bound fast. Crushed with shame at the thought of being thus exposed to the gaze of the crowd, the moment she stepped upon the parvise Aveline closed her eyes with an involuntary movement, and did not at first see Mazurec who was being taken back to prison. However, at the heart-rending cry that he uttered, a shudder went over her frame, she trembled at every limb, and her eyes met the gaze of her husband, a gaze of desolation, in which passionate love and yet painful repulsion mixed with ferocious jealousy, raised within his breast by the thought of the outrage that his wife had been subject to, were all depicted at once. The last of these feelings was betrayed by an involuntary movement, made by the wretched young man, who, avoiding the beseeching looks of Aveline, made a gesture of horror, covered his face with his hands, and rushed under the vault like one demented, followed by the men-at-arms who had him in charge.

      "He despises me," murmured the girl with fainting voice and following her husband with haggard eyes. "He now no longer loves me." Saying this, Aveline became livid, her knees yielded under her, she lost consciousness and would have rolled upon the ground without Caillet, who, hastening to meet her, received her in his arms, saying: "Your father remains to you." Then, helped by Adam the Devil, he raised her up, and both, carrying the swooning young bride in their arms, disappeared in the crowd.

      Jocelyn the Champion, a witness to this distressing scene, rushed into the vault that opened upon the parvise, overtook the keepers of Mazurec and said to one of them:

      "The serf they are taking away yonder has been summoned to a judicial combat, is it so comrade?"

      "Yes," answered the man-at-arms, "he is to combat with the knight Gerard of Chaumontel. Such is the sentence."

      "I must speak to that serf."

      "He is to communicate with nobody."

      "I am his judicial second in this combat, will you venture to keep me from seeing and speaking with my client? By Satan! I know the law. If you refuse – "

      "There is no need of bawling so loud. If you are Jacques Bonhomme's judicial second, come … you have a sorry principal!"

      CHAPTER III.

      THE TOURNAMENT

      The tourney, a ruinous spectacle offered to the nobility of the neighborhood by the Sire of Nointel in celebration of his betrothal, was held on a large meadow that stretched before the gates of the town. The lists were according to the royal ordinance of the year 1306, twenty-four paces long by forty wide, and surrounded by a double row of fences four feet apart. In this latter space the horn and clarion blowers were posted; likewise the valets of the combatting knights were allowed in this latter enclosure, ready to carry their masters from the mêlée, or to run to their assistance when unhorsed, seeing that these valiant jousters were covered with such heavy and thick armor that they could move only with difficulty. Within these barriers were also seen the heralds and sergeants-at-arms, charged with preserving order at the tourney, and passing upon foul blows.

      The plebs of the town and neighboring fields, having hastened to witness the spectacle at the close of the mass, crowded on the outside. A more ragged, wan, miserable and worn-out mass could hardly be imagined than that presented by the crowd whose crushing labors supplied the prodigalities of their seigneurs. The only satisfaction enjoyed by these cowed and brutified people was that of being allowed to assist from a distance, as on this day, at the sumptuous displays that they paid for with their sweat and their marrow. The vassals, leaving their mud-huts, where, exhausted with hunger and broken by toil – at night they huddled pell-mell on the marshy ground like animals in their pens – contemplated with an astonishment that was sometimes mixed with savage hatred, the brilliant assemblage covered with silks and velvets, embroideries and precious stones, seated on a spacious amphitheater, that, decked with tapestries and rich hangings, rose along one of the sides of the lists, and was reserved for the noble dames, the seigneurs and the prelates of the vicinage. On either side of the amphitheater, which was sheltered by tent-cloths СКАЧАТЬ